I have a table in XL that I've been updating for years, first as an .XLS in Excel 2003, now in Excel 2016. I just saved the latest version as an .XLSX file. Now, when I right-click Excel on the taskbar, I don't see it in the list of recent files. But now i have an icon for Microsoft Open XML Converter, and the file is pinned to that icon.

How do I get it pinned to the Excel icon?

This sounds like a file association problem. Close the workbook then in Windows Explorer, right click on the filename and select Open With, Choose Default Program. Select Excel and make sure that "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" is ticked. Click OK.

Good luck!

Thanks, but clicking the file does get Excel to open it...but still in compatibility mode. I just can't pin it to the Excel icon on my taskbar.

Perhaps a better way would be to convert the files to the new format. Saving as .xlsx doesn't work, and the only advice I find is to go to File/Info and click the "convert" icon...which may appear in prior Excels, but not in 2016 as far as I can see.

...The Help file in my Excel 2016 contains references to "Excel 2013," so apparently the program was changed without updating the Help file.